Tom Hanks' son Colin has a dead straight role as the idealistic manager of an old folks' home in Fred Wolf's The House Bunny, a film nearly as mirthless as the same director's Strange Wilderness. Anna Faris stars as Shelley, an orphan who has discovered her home as a resident Bunny in Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.

The day after her 27th birthday party, she gets a letter telling her to leave. Naturally, the letter is a fake, forged by a rival, because Hef (played by the 82-year-old sexual philosopher himself) wouldn't treat a girl like that. But before she's recalled to Bunny duty, the dumb, dizzy, street-smart Shelley has become sorority mother to a bunch of losers at a California university. She gives them a makeover and transforms their house into the acme of Sorority Row. This is the bellwether movie for the year in which the threat of Sarah Palin hangs over the world. It should have been called 'To Hef and Hef Not' or 'Crass of 2008'.